Here’s an inconsequential bit of South African literary history. The late poet Professor Stephen Watson used to have me over to his little house on Rouwkoop Road in Rondebosch just across the road from the railway line. This was in the mid-Eighties. With the occasional roar of a passing train in the background we often […]
University of Cape Town
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
The battle for public memory: Why #RhodesMust(Not)Fall
By Marlyn Faure Don’t get me wrong I don’t think colonial symbols like the statue of Rhodes should be left uncontested. But blanket calls for the removal and sometimes the destruction of all colonial symbols could perhaps be working against the very issues being fought for: transformation, recognition, acknowledgment and justice. The protests at UCT […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Leave the Rhodes statue, remove its legacy!
It should be pretty obvious that Cecil John Rhodes would be largely considered a repulsive person by today’s modern moral standards, which favour equality. Anyone who, like Rhodes, acquires insane amounts wealth on the back of mass exploitation of a marginalised people would most likely be considered notorious and not be regarded as a hero. […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
Rhodes, Rancière and the politics of aesthetics
The events surrounding the protests for the removal of the Rhodes statue located at a focal point on the Upper Campus of the University of Cape Town (UCT) has provided me with an opportunity to revisit Jacques Rancière’s influential contemporary argument on the politics of aesthetics. The focus on a statue obviously lends an explicit […]
Posted inEquality
Take it down
I know someone who — shall we say — passed water on Cecil John Rhodes’ grave in the Matopos Hills in southern Zimbabwe. The National Archives of Zimbabwe in Harare removed its own CJR statue in the 1980s and stuck it behind the building with some rusting tractors. Poor CJR. All he wanted was to […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Memory and moving forward: #RhodesMustFall is not a shitty argument
If you do not like something, throw poop at it. This was the thinking of some protestors who called for the removal of the Rhodes statue from the University of Cape Town campus citing that the continued presence of the statue was an ode to the white dominance of the past. The calls for the […]
Posted inEquality, General, Media, News/Politics
Airbrushing history: Debating Rhodes’ legacy
As the debate raged in Cape Town over whether to remove the statue of British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, I found myself in a grand house named after him some 6 000 miles away. Rhodes House is the quaint Oxford-based headquarters of the Rhodes scholarships. Named for and funded by Rhodes, the scholarships are awarded annually […]
Posted inGeneral
Debating universities’ admissions policies
By Khethelo Xulu Reading what other young people in the country think about the future and the direction the country is taking is thought-provoking. As a young citizen of the country, I usually follow and participate in such debates. The most recent debate I have engaged in centers on universities’ admissions policies. An article about […]